Winter
by Vampy Sparda
Summary: A passerbyer mourns over gravestones in the dead of winter, in a future where the world is decaying and evil is reigning once again.


A/N : Don't own DMC and what not. Another drabble for the sake of practicing angst this time. Get out tissues if you're emotional like me, folks. >.>

* * *

_All of my memories keep you near  
Silent moments imagine you in here  
All of my memories keep you near  
Your silent whispers, silent tears_

_Together in all these memories  
I see your smile  
All the memories I hold dear  
Darling, you know I'll love you  
'till the end of time..._  
**- "Memories" by Within Temptation**

**

* * *

**

Winter has come, as always. Snow's covered the yard, every tombstone glowing under the pristine white. No one ever comes to graveyards when it's snowing, it seems. There aren't any footprints, not even from the occasional squirrel or bird. Not even the birds come here.

The only real speck of color is from a batch of rotted brown roses on one particular tombstone. The stones adjacent to it only have a vase with a single rose. It's depressing, really, coming and seeing the flowers. Dead as the ones buried beneath them. This whole time and place and world is just one gray memory after another.

Above the stones is a weeping willow. Fitting for its placement. Mother planted it there, all those years ago. She planted it for our 'family'. Our brothers in arms, so to speak. Their bloodline is dead, and she planted the willow to mourn over them for as long as it lasts.

The sun's beginning its slow descent again, as it does every day. I was supposed to have returned home long ago, but I am once again drawn to these graves. Every day I've visited my "brothers" for longer periods of time. Today, I cannot seem to draw myself away. And here I've sat on this cold marble bench, watching the dirt covering beings that will never move again. I've shrugged as far as I can into my long coat, and I've yet to feel the biting cold that's continually stinging my face.

Frost doesn't stream down my face as it used to. I've run out of tears. They've been gone months, years. The world has steadily declined as I weep over those who are gone.

…Mother. I promised I'd bury her next to her old "family" when she went. She smiled and told me that the old man would've hated that. Of course, had you spoken of death to him, he would've laughed and shrugged off the subject, saying no way he'll ever die, not while she's alive.

He was wrong. Mother lived and he died to save her, just as he kidded he would.

"Go out with a bang, kid. It's the only way I'd ever go." He'd used to tell me and put a gloved hand on my head, messing up my hair. He had been like a father to me. Funny enough.

I remember one time when I was young, younger than I am now, anyways, and he had come over to spend time with my mother and me. He had told me the story of his brother – his twin, whom he had shared a bond with through his life and even in death. He would always kid, my mother's "brother".

That night he told me the story of his youth, when he was my age.

"My brother grew up a demon. When we were in our teens, he raised up this huge-ass tower right smack dab in the middle of our town. Killed hundreds of people, and summoned a demon to take each dead's place. Opened the gates of Hell."

"For a few minutes, at least." My mother interjected. He laughed and nodded.

"That's how I had come to know your lovely, good-natured mother." They both laughed at this, and I was left in the dust. I understand now why they laughed when they remembered the past.

"When we first really met, I shot him in the forehead." She raised a wrinkled finger to the spot right between her bi-colored eyes.

"Twice." He laughed again.

She shrugged. "The second time didn't count." She lowered her voice, like she had seen someone outside my foggy bedroom window, listening to us. "He caught the bullet with his teeth."

"I tell ya, the dentist sure didn't believe me." We all laughed at this, even me in my child-like understanding. I had come to find this silver-haired devil to be family, and as normal as my mother and me. I found that our world wasn't normal at all, later on.

"The next time I remember seeing him, he was drenched in blood. Stank of it."

"Like I planned to be swallowed by a giant fish."

She rolled her eyes, knowing perfectly well he had. "He had sliced open the thing's eye, and he jumped out with this whole stream of blood spurting out from behind him."

"Me at my most handsome. She remembers that scene perfectly." I remember he purred at her and lightly tapped her arm. He was always so much bigger than her. She was frail looking, but not in actuality. I had seen her tote Kalina Ann as if that gun weighed nothing. My mother told me a different story of her demon-hunting days every night when I went to sleep. When I told my friends of those stories, they in turn told their parents. Then every week, she'd have concerned parents telling her to stop telling such evil stories, that such things would give me nightmares.

If she hadn't told me of her younger days, I'd be dead.

Dead, alongside my mother's "brother", and his brother, and his father and mother. The whole Sparda family is nothing but four piles of ashes under melting snow.

I sit here still, twirling Rebellion in the snow, and watching the sun leave the day behind. It sinks behind destroyed buildings; crushed bodies of great skyscrapers that reached to the heavens. Shattered glass and trampled cars litter the broken tar of the streets. This world is ending.

There's a sound behind me and I twirl around, red coat flapping behind me. Rebellion flew to my hand at once, ready for action. It's just a stray dog, rummaging through trash. It picks up something, and I see it prancing away, a decaying hand locked in the canine's jaws.

Sparda is dead. His wife, buried alongside him. His sons, each a seed of a devil and a human's love, buried to the sides of the Red Huntress. The hope for our world was diminished the day Dante saved my mother from the invading force.

Maybe not completely diminished. My mother always told me I was destined to do great things.

"Save the world, get no thanks." He would always say.

This is the last time I'll come to this graveyard. I did what I promised. Now my mother rests alongside her family. They were written down in books, and will be remembered in memory.

The Sparda Family. The Dark Knight. His human love, whom he saved humanity for, Eva. Their twin sons – Dante, the loudmouth, and Vergil, the bookworm. And my beloved mother, who lived her life as long as any human. Lady, Dante told me her name was. But the stone above her read Mary.

The Sparda bloodline is dead. I thought so, at least.

"Not yet." My mother whispered on her deathbed. "I never told you. Not yet. Not yet." And she told me.

I bend down in front of each grave, and give a frozen kiss to each headstone. "You will be in my memory, always." I say to each, even to Sparda and Eva and Vergil, who I never knew. My mother told me she had fallen in love with him. Both of the twins, she told me. Both of Sparda's sons.

She told me on her deathbed, what I had never known.

I linger on Dante's grave, and look at Rebellion with grief. "I'll make you proud." My lips are numb, but the words are full of life.

I stab Rebellion into the frozen ground, deep. Almost up to the hilt. The skeleton head and ribcage sit next to Dante's gravestone. The sword, and the spirit within it, will watch over Sparda, and his wife. It will watch as time passes. It will watch over my mother. It will watch over Vergil.

It will watch over Dante. It will watch over that silver-haired devil, my true father, and the man who passed his legacy to me.


End file.
